The Healthcare Fellows is a formal executive education program focused on the many business sectors in Louisville’s vast healthcare ecosystem. Each year professionals are selected to participate in the 10-month program with sessions led by community leaders, academics, elected officials, organizational experts, researchers and entrepreneurs. Fellows met virtually in July due to the pandemic.

The session included a presentation from Warren Olson, vice president of Healthcare Distribution Operations at UPS, who is responsible for the distribution operations for 54 pharmaceutical, medical device and invitro diagnostics companies operating across 2.5 million square feet of healthcare compliant space.

UPS Healthcare

UPS Healthcare has been helping healthcare companies make their operations more precise, productive, scalable and smart for nearly 20 years. The team of over 5,000 healthcare logistics professionals and technology-enabled global network helps growth-minded companies with inventory planning, specialized storage and fulfillment, multimodal transportation and customs compliance.

In March, UPS announced an increase in efforts in coordination with the President’s Coronavirus Taskforce, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and state health agencies. UPS Healthcare and UPS operations all over the world are working with many companies and agencies across the public and private sectors. 

Recently, UPS made headlines for readying freezer farms to ship the coronavirus vaccine. UPS is building two giant freezer farms capable of super-cooling millions of vials of a COVID-19 vaccine, preparing for the day when it will need to deliver the medicine at high speed across the globe.

The facilities, under construction in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Netherlands, near UPS air hubs, will house a total of 600 deep-freezers that can each hold 48,000 vials of vaccine at temperatures as low as -80 Celsius (-112 Fahrenheit).